duchess

Definitions

nduchessthe wife of a duke or a woman holding ducal title in her own right

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Additional illustrations & photos:

Duchess thinks she swallowed the tin

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

Interesting fact:
Author Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, who sometimes wrote under the name "The Duchess," observed in her novel "Molly Bawn" that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." The phrase has passed into the English language.

nDuchessThe wife or widow of a duke; also, a lady who has the sovereignty of a duchy in her own right.

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Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

nduchessThe consort or widow of a duke, or a woman who holds the sovereignty or titles of a duchy.

nduchessA variety of roofing-slate two feet long and one foot wide.

nduchessA part of ladies' head-dress in the seventeenth century, apparently a knot of ribbon.

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Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary

nsDuchessthe consort or widow of a duke

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Quotations

Samuel Johnson

“Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.”

Lewis Carroll

“If everybody minded their own business, the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”

Horace Walpole

“It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.”

Etymology

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

F. duchesse, fr. duc, duke

Usage

In literature:

Tassino lived in rooms next to her own, and rode out with the duchess on pillion behind him.